Jan. 24th 2026
| Game system | Curseborne |
|---|---|
| Campaign name | The Sanctuary of Hecate |
| Started | Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 6:49 PM (GMT+00:00) |
| Ended | Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 10:48 PM (GMT+00:00) |
| Duration | 3 hours, 58 minutes, 35 seconds |
| Game master | Kryptykphysh |
| Players participated | X, XX, XXX, and XXXX |
You are Curseborne, a household of individuals bound to a magical home known as the Sanctuary of Hecate. It is a place of wonder, with doors that open to other times and places. But lately, the magic of the Sanctuary has begun to feel… wrong. Spells twist into unrecognizable shapes, and an unnerving psychic bleed pervades your home. What is causing this corruption, and can you stop it before it consumes the Sanctuary and you along with it?
This is a one-shot scenario to ease people into the Curseborne universe. Bad things will happen to these pregenerated characters, do not get too attached.
Scenes
| Scene | Time | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | House of Hecate - Parlour | 3 hours, 8 minutes |
| 2. | The Sanctuary of Hecate (The Corrupted Heart) | 10 seconds |
| 3. | House of Hecate - Parlour | 50 minutes, 25 seconds |
Here is a detailed session report of the Curseborne RPG session, based on the audio transcript.
Session Overview
- System: Curseborne (Storypath Ultra)
- Setting: The Sanctuary of Hecate (a “Loophole” or safe house) in London
- In-Game Date: 24 January 2026
- Characters Present:
- Theo “Switch” Karras (The Key): An Outcast of the League of the Hidden Crossroads
- Mariah “Cerberus” Tate (The Dog): A Primal of the Get of Lyka
- Dante “Charon” Graves (The Ferryman): A Dead of the Zed Corporation
- Valeria “Vee” Sanguis (The Knife): A Hungry (Vampire) of House Báthory
- Note: The fifth crew member, Dr. Aris Thorne (The Torch), was indisposed upstairs suffering from “cholera” (a Sorcerer’s sacrifice) and was not played during this session (actually, the player couldn’t make the session)
Prologue: Mechanics and Setup
Before the narrative began, the group established the core mechanics of the Storypath Ultra system. Key concepts included Curse Dice (a resource representing the character’s entanglement with their curse, acting like mana or a limit break) and Momentum (a shared pool generated by failure, used to edit fiction or enhance rolls) 14, 15. They also established that the characters reside in the Sanctuary of Hecate, a “Loophole” liminal space that suppresses their curses, manifesting as a Victorian home with impossible geography.
Scene 1: The Deipnon (The Supper)
The session opened with the crew sharing an evening meal in the Sanctuary’s parlour. The atmosphere was heavy, smelling of ozone and old dust 16. The spectral Housekeeper served the crew while they discussed the absence of Dr. Aris.
The Delivery: A heavy knock disturbed the dinner. Switch, possessing the “Key” to the house, was reluctant to allow entry, but Mariah (The Dog) opened the door. Standing in the rain were two delivery men wearing caps labelled “Breekon and Hope, Nottingham”.
- The Collapse: The delivery men presented a package and, upon completing the delivery, instantly collapsed into piles of inanimate wood, string, and clothing. They were marionettes.
Scene 2: The King in Yellow
The package, addressed to Dr. Aris Thorne, was wrapped in damp butcher paper and sealed with yellow wax stamped with a tripartite glyph.
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The Investigation
- The Yellow Sign: Investigating the glyph, Dante and Mariah recognised it as the “Yellow Sign” from the Robert W. Chambers stories—a fictional symbol associated with madness. However, to the Accursed, it felt dangerously real, inflicting a “Confused” status effect on Dante.
- The Book: Mariah tore open the package to reveal a pristine hardback book bound in blood-red leather. It had no title on the spine, but the interior title page read The King in Yellow: A Play in Three Acts.
- The Anomaly: Mariah used her Primal senses to inspect the book. She determined it smelled like “pig-human,” a scent resembling flesh but not quite human, nor any animal she’d come across.
- The Infection: Upon reading the text, Theo (Switch) discovered the script did not contain the original play, but rather a real-time transcript of the players’ current actions and dialogue. The book was writing their reality as it happened.
The Shift: The presence of the book began to overwrite the reality of the Sanctuary. The wallpaper shifted to a pattern of screaming faces, the gaslights hissed with a jaundiced light, and hallways stretched into infinity. The crew realised the book was a “mimetic virus” attempting to replace the Sanctuary (Hecate) with Carcosa (The King in Yellow).
While the rest of the crew remained in the parlour discussing the package, Theo “Switch” Karras left to check the living room and study, sensing the shifting atmosphere of the house.
Theo attempted to commune with the house to understand the nature of the threat. Using his Key (his talisman of authority over the house’s thresholds), he locked one of the hallway doors to gauge the house’s reaction.
• The Wicked Success: Theo rolled Empathy + Presence (utilizing Cursed Dice). He achieved a “Wicked Success” (a success involving a Cursed Die result).
• The Revelation: Through the Key, Theo felt two distinct entities:
1. The House: It was terrified and shivering.
2. The Intruder: An alien presence (The King reassured him everything was “according to plan.” It was not pushing the house out but overwriting it with a new narrative.
When Theo turned to report this to the group, the door to the parlour was gone. He was isolated in the shifting corridor and screamed in frustration.
Hearing Theo’s scream, the rest of the crew (Mariah, Dante, and Valeria) rushed into the hallway to find him.
• The Chase: The house actively remade itself around them as they ran. They shouted to locate one another, passing through rooms where mirrors showed doorways that did not exist in reality.
• The Meeting Point: The group eventually converged in a dim, dust-covered room that appeared to be an unused parlour. The lighting was low, provided by hissing gas lamps.
The Room of the Marionettes
Upon reuniting, the crew discovered they were not alone in the room.
The Tableau Discarded on the sofas were three life-sized marionettes made of porcelain and wood, with their strings trailing behind them.
• Valeria’s Horror: Valeria (“The Knife”) realized the marionettes were dressed in the clothing of her past victims and made up to resemble them.
• The Confrontation: Valeria attempted to remain unfazed, speaking to the puppets defiantly: “Okay, should it impress me?“.
The Jump Scare The background hiss of the gaslights stopped, plunging the room into absolute darkness. When the lights flared back up moments later:
• The marionettes had moved closer to the group.
• The Storyguide called for a Resolve + Integrity roll to resist the fear and psychological pressure of the scene.
The Realisation
Following this encounter, the group deduced the nature of the threat:
• The Virus: They realized the “King in Yellow” is not a physical monster but a memetic virus or “narrative collapse.” It was rewriting the Sanctuary (and the characters) into a play.
• The Plan: Reasoning that they could not destroy an idea physically, they decided to use the Sanctuary’s connection to Hecate (Goddess of the Underworld) to open a door to the Deep Realms (Hades/Tartarus). Their goal was to bury the book and the infection in the Underworld to contain it.
Scene 3: The Descent
The crew determined they could not destroy the book physically. Reasoning that the Sanctuary is a place of Hecate (Goddess of the Underworld), they decided to bury the book in the “Deep Realms” (Hades/Tartarus) to contain the infection.
The Trap:
Switch used his skeleton key on a hallway door, intending to open a path to the basement/Underworld.
- The Stage: Instead of the basement, the door opened onto a balcony overlooking a massive, impossible theatre. A spotlight blinded them, and a director’s voice boomed, “Wrong entrance! Again from the top!“.
- The Fall: Gravity shifted 90 degrees, threatening to dump the crew into the void of the “orchestra pit.” Mariah (The Dog) used a massive feat of strength to catch herself, Valeria (whose knife was carving up the carpet) and Dante (who seemed momentarily unable to co-ordinate his limbs)and prevent them from falling into the narrative trap. Theo meanwhile, burned some momentum to prevent himself falling into the void.
The Conclusion: Gravity righted itself. The door now revealed a dark, narrow staircase leading down into damp earth, smelling of the grave.
- The Descent: Dante (The Ferryman) took the lead, his corpse-body glowing faintly to light the way as they descended into the dark to bury the King.
Significant Point: The session established that the threat is not a physical monster, but a “narrative collapse” where the King in Yellow overwrites reality, turning the characters into actors in a play.